LocalThunk forbids AI-generated art on the Balatro subreddit: ‘I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds’

A minor kerfuffle in the Balatro subreddit has led developer LocalThunk to weigh in on the topic of AI-generated art, and his position is clear: It hurts artists, and it’s not welcome.

As documented by RPS, the whole thing began when a now-former subreddit moderator named DrTankHead jumped into a thread questioning the presence of AI art in the subreddit. “We will not be banning AI art here, if it is properly claimed and tagged as such,” DrTankHead wrote. “This has been done after discussion with the staff at PlayStack.”

The subsequent conversation went to some interesting places, including the discovery of a NSFW “Balatroromance” subreddit, of which DrTankHead is also a moderator. But there was also significant pushback against the apparent official approval of AI-generated art. As Reddit beef goes, it seems fairly mild to me, at least from what I’ve seen of it, but it didn’t take long before LocalThunk felt the need to set the record straight.

“A mod recently changed the flair in this subreddit for AI generated art making it seem like Playstack condones AI art,” LocalThunk wrote in a separate thread. “This was not due to a direct order from Playstack (a Playstack representative told me this) but from an interpretation of a message about enforcing the rules of the subreddit.

“Neither Playstack nor I condone AI ‘art’. I don’t use it in my game, I think it does real harm to artists of all kinds. The actions of this mod do not reflect how Playstack feels or how I feel on the topic. We have removed this moderator from the moderation team. We will not be allowing AI generated images on this subreddit from now on. We will make sure our rules and FAQ reflect this soon.”

Playstack communications director Wout van Halderen echoed that position in a reply, writing that “we do not support the use of AI art.” In a subsequent post, Van Halderen said the subreddit rules originally forbid “unlabelled AI content,” which could be taken as indicating that AI content was allowable as long as it was marked as such. That was not the case, however, and Van Halderen wrote that “this should have been discussed by the mod team before making sweeping statements about the interpretation of the rule.”

He also committed to working with subreddit moderators “to tighten up the rules and FAQ around this.” Sure enough, the Balatro subreddit’s rules, under the “No low-effort posts/no spam” section, now explicitly forbid “AI generated art or content.”

This won’t be the last time we see this sort of disagreement play out. I heartily endorse LocalThunk’s position on the matter, but I also acknowledge that AI-generated art is here and it’s not going away. And while it remains deeply unpopular with a lot of gamers, some developers have opted to embrace generative AI, and some gamers don’t seem too fussed about it.

The good news for those who fall into the latter camp: AI-generated Balatro art has a new home. In a post on the Balatroromance subreddit (NSFW, remember), DrTankHead said they continue to support LocalThunk, PlayStack, and the rest of the Balatro mod team, “and understand why they’ve made the choices they made.” They also announced a change to the Balatroromance rules to allow AI-generated art along with NSFW content.